So this week we were supposed to try out some kind of live media product and write our thoughts about it. I decided to use Periscope, something I’ve never done before, and it was a pretty interesting experience.
The way the app works is that it’s connected to your Twitter account, and you broadcast live from your phone. Viewers can watch, comment, and “heart,” and it’s all saved and archived so anyone can watch it after.
I didn’t really know what to expect going in. I was just sitting in my living room and started broadcasting, and people started watching.
Immediately people started watching, and I felt a kind of pressure to perform, though clearly I had nothing prepared. I just ended up kind of talking about random things: my homework assignments, my cat, the project I did at a hackathon over the weekend. There were 3 people in the chat that I knew, and a bunch more that I didn’t. They asked me to show them what was in my fridge, so I did.
What felt strange was the way we were communicating – it wasn’t exactly one to all or one to one, but something in between. I spoke and people listened, and then they responded via chat. Then I responded to the things I read by speaking out loud. I’m sure my roommate in the other room thought I was talking to myself.
I asked people what they usually liked to see on Periscope and got a few interesting responses:
I did not have the wherewithal to take many more screenshots in the moment, which is related to another part of the whole experience: trying to learn a new technology while being watched by a bunch of people at the same time is somewhat difficult.
Overall I enjoyed it, and can see the appeal. There were a surprising number of people who watched my stream given that nothing was happening – something like 133 total. Anyway, if you want to watch the awkward and boring archive, you can do so here.
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